The first physical copies of Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit Book 4 have crawled up on our shores, and more copies will be infecting Small Press Expo this weekend (where you can get an exclusive bonus signed bookplate) in advance of oozing into stores in November. This volume features the most hideous transmogrifications, the craziest foes, and the most brutal trials yet for our antihero Cannibal Fuckface as he seeks to free himself from the mysterious Caligulon. Plus a chainsaw on a stick. Get a taste with a 14-page excerpt and pre-order your copy right here.

Sorry to make you think about Christmas in September, but we just have to share this peek at this adorable little gift book we're putting out in November, just in time for stuffing stockings: Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking by Charles M. Schulz! This book (in a size and format similar to Peanuts classics like Happiness Is a Warm Puppy) collects two never-before-reprinted holiday-themed 1960s magazine features written and drawn by Schulz starring the Peanuts gang. It's our first Peanuts book that's not part of The Complete Peanuts series and we couldn't be more excited! Get some early gift shopping out of the way by pre-ordering a copy now, and be on the lookout for more sneak peeks.

Making its debut at SPX this weekend and coming to stores in November, it's Blacklung, Chris Wright's long-buzzed-about debut graphic novel (following his acclaimed short story collection Inkweed). We call it "a sweeping, magisterially conceived, visually startling tale of violence, amorality, fortitude, and redemption, one part Melville, one part Peckinpah." And it's got pirates! You can pre-order and read a 12-page excerpt right here.

(A small warning: now that we have the printed books in hand, we noticed that due to a strange and unique confluence of events, page 36 is accidentally repeated on page 27. Fortunately, there are no missing pages, and somehow it doesn't even mess up any other page spreads — like we said, strange. So when you come to that page and it seems out of sequence, just skip on to the next page and everything will be fine.)

This is just one title from a large shipment of advance copies we received on Friday last week, which means we'll be doling out more sneak peeks over the next few days. It's gettin' kinda hectic 'round here!

Speaking of EC Comics...

Heh, heh! Got a real chiller-diller this time fiends! Join me, The Crypt-Keeper, your host of howls, along with Jack Davis and Al Feldstein as we creep our way through four spine-tingling, hair-standing, blood-curdling tales of terror! We'll scare you silly! Trick or treat? Treat!!

Jack Davis's Tales from the Crypt is one of TWO special mini-comics we produced as a special Halloween 2012 give-away for participating comic shops (stay tuned for our announcement of the second one... here's a hint: rhymes with "Grasil Molverton"). Contact your local shop for availability.

Not near a comic shop? You can also obtain a copy via our special mail-order offer: while supplies last, get a copy FREE with purchase of any volume in The EC Comics Library or Jack Davis: Drawing American Pop Culture!

We're like Navin Johnson on new phone book day over here!

Advance copies of these two highly-anticipated beauties arrived at the office yesterday: the first two volumes in our EC Comics Library series, Came the Dawn and Other Stories illustrated by Wallace Wood and Corpse on the Imjin! and Other Stories by Harvey Kurtzman et al. Came the Dawn features thrilling crime and suspense stories drawn by Wood (written mostly by Al Feldstein), and Corpse on the Imjin! contains Kurtzman's masterful and influential war stories illustrated by himself and others. If you didn't know and hadn't gathered, the volumes in this new series collect stories by genre and creator, in glorious black and white. (And don't they look handsome? Series design & art direction by good ol' Jacob Covey.) This classic material has never been collected this way before, and we're honored and proud to be doing it!

We've already posted excerpts from each book on its respective page with several full stories you can read (plus the tables of contents for your reference), and, of course, stay tuned for further previews. We also have a special deal for our mail-order customers where you can buy both books together for 20% off! Yes, we will have advance copies for sale at SPX next week and at our EC exhibit at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery next month (stay tuned for more about that), and the books are due to hit the shelves in November.

Say, we haven't shared these with you yet:

Above, final cover art for Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 4: House of the Seven Haunts! by Floyd Gottfredson, and below, the box set for the Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 3 + 4 Box Set. More rollicking, globe-trotting adventures starring Mickey, Minnie, their pals Goofy and Donald, and a rogue's gallery of baddies! We've put up an excerpt with 18 pages of strips from Vol. 4 which you can check out right now. These are at the printer and in the pipeline for mid-to-late Fall.

Behold the Bona Fide Balderdash! We just put the finishing touches on Pogo - The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 2 and sent it off to the printer! (Right on schedule too, we might add.) Here's your first look at the final cover artwork (click the image for a slightly bigger version) — once again the book is lovingly edited and designed by Walt Kelly's daughter Carolyn Kelly. Look for the book to hit shelves right around Thanksgiving time; learn more about it and pre-order your copy here.

Also, although we decided not to when we started the series, we have been persuaded to release our Pogo volumes in slipcased sets of two (just like The Complete Peanuts and Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse), and the first set is also available for pre-order now. We'll share the final slipcase design with you as soon as it's ready to show off. We're still figuring out whether it will be feasible to offer the slipcases separately; stay tuned for news on that.

Prince Valiant expert Brian M. Kane shares this graphic he created to commemorate the debut of Val and Aleta's son Arn in the strip 65 years ago today. The blessed event just happens to take place in Prince Valiant Vol. 6: 1947-1948, which just happens to be the next volume in the series and just happens to be in the works for a scheduled December release and just happens to now be available for pre-order here on our website. Imagine that!

Have you seen this man? We want to include this historical portrait of Juan Seguín in our upcoming book Jack Jackson's American History: Los Tejanos & Lost Cause, as we did on the back cover of our original edition of Los Tejanos (which predates the era of digital production by many years). We're in a hurry and high-res images aren't available online. We would just scan it from a file copy of the book but, as you can see, our file copies are in pretty rough shape. If you have a pristine copy of the book (or another source for the image) and can send us a high-res scan (300 dpi), we'll send you a free copy of the new Jack Jackson book when it comes out if we use your scan! (And we won't use it but it would be nice to have a clean digital copy of the front cover as well.) Please send your scan(s) to our "fbicomix@" email address. The race is on!

Hey look, it's the just-completed, totally eyeball-tickling final cover art for Tom Kaczynski's forthcoming story collection Beta Testing the Apocalypse, scheduled to arrive in November, which we describe as "a heady conflation of philosophy, fiction and comics that riffs on dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments." If you've read Tom's stories in Mome, which are collected here (along with other material including a new story), you know the deal. You can learn more and pre-order a copy here, and of course keep it tuned here for more sneak peeks to come.